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Party and Federation in the USSR: The Problem of the Nationalities and Power in the USSR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Hélène Carrère d’Encausse
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Extract

THE SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION PROVIDES AN opportunity to draw up a balance-sheet. It is even more appropriate as the Soviet leaders have used the occasion to adopt a new constitution, and have thus implied that a new stage is about to begin for Soviet society and for the system of government which emanates from it and embodies it. This stage, called advanced socialism, has several characteristics: ‘the formation of a new historic community - the Soviet people, the development of the dictatorship of the proletariat into the state of the whole people, the transformation of the CPSU from a revolutionary party of the workers into the party of all the people, the strengthening of the homogeneity of Soviet society’. The phrases ‘homogeneity and cohesion of society’ are probably those which recur most frequently in the presentation of the new constitution, especially when its national implications are described. ‘The constitution of the USSR is at the same time a constitution of a state of the whole people — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — and of the fifteen sovereign republics which compose it and finally of the thirtyeight national-state formations with differing forms of autonomy. The new historic community — the Soviet people — numbers 250 million citizens, representing more than one hundred nations and nationalities of the USSR. But it is also a single social monolith, a single historical phenomenon with a single economy, a single culture, a single Soviet way of life, a single ideology’

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Article
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Government and Opposition , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1978 , pp. 133 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1978

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References

1 Shevarnadze, E. ‘Internatsionalisticheskoye Vospitaniye Mass’, Kommunist, No. 13, 09 1977, p. 38.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., pp. 35–6.

3 On the evolution of Lenin’s thinking on this question, see my Bolchévisme et nation, Paris, Presses de la FNSP, forthcoming, spring 1978.

4 Sbornik Zakonov SSSR, Moscow, Vol., 1969. pp. 44 ff.

5 V. I Lenin, Polnoye Sobraniye Sochineniy (5th ed.), Vol. 45, pp. 557–8, Stalin’s project.

6 Ibid., Vol. 45, p. 559.

7 Ibid., Vol. 45, pp. 211–3 Lenin’s remarks on Stalin’s project.

8 Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 318, and Vol. 24, p. 123.

9 KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, Vol. II, pp. 73–4.

10 V. I. Lenin, op. cit., Vol. 54, pp. 299–300.

11 See the summary of Sultan Galiev’s report to the Narkomnats, 24 April 1919, in Zhizn Natsional nostyey, No. 11, 109, 28 May 1921.

12 See Stalin, J. V., Sochineniya, Moscow, 1952, Vol. 5, pp. 301–3.Google Scholar

13 M. Skrypnyk, Stati i promovi, Kharkov, 1931, II, 2nd part, quoted in R. Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union, pp. 263–3.

14 See article 14 of the Constitution on the delimitation of powers between federal, federal‐republican, and republican competences, and also article 15.

15 Kozhevnikov, M. V., Sovetskoye gosudarstvo i mezhdunarodnoye pravo, 1917–1947, Moscow, 1948, pp. 32 and 180.Google Scholar

16 Barghoorn, F., ‘Stalinism and the Russian Cultural Heritage’, Review of Politics, XIV, No. 2, April 1952, pp. 178–203.Google Scholar

17 See for instance Dzhamalov, O. B., ed., Istoriya narodnogo khozyaystva Uzbekistana, Tashkent, 1962, Vol. 1, especially pp. 251 ff.Google Scholar

18 Stalin’s attitude on this point became obvious from the day of victory ‐See Pravda, 25 May 1945.

19 XXII S’ezd kommunisticheskoy partii sovetskogo soyuza, Part 1, pp. 153 ff.

20 Notably Voprosy Istorii No. 3, 1976, pp. 82–96; No. 7, 1967, pp. 87–104, No. 2, 1968, pp. 99–112, No. 3, 1968, pp. 83–91. Voprosy Filosofii, No. 9, 1967, pp. 26–36; No. 2, 1969, pp. 26–31.

21 See Sadykov, M., ‘Narodnost’ i natsiya kak sotsial’no‐etnicheskiye formy obshchnosti lyudey’, Kommunist Tatarii, No. 1, 1967, pp. 12–18.Google Scholar

22 Kommunist Uzbekistana, No. 8., 1968, pp. 72–9.

23 See L. I. Brezhnev in Pravda, 26 September 1968, p. 4.

24 Konstitutsiya (osnovnoy zakon) soyuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik, Politizdat, Moscow 1977, 62 pages.

25 V. I. Lenin, op cit., Vol. 35, p. 189, Vol. 36, p. 545, Vol. 37, p. 480, Vol. 42, pp. 167–9, Vol. 43, pp. 264–5, etc.

26 See Zarya Vostoka, 8, 16 and 17 February 1977, on the forms of opposition in Georgia.

27 The opposition thesis is defended in M. Chafir, Competentsiya SSSR i Soyuznoy respubliki, Moscow, 1968.

28 See Zarya Vostoka, 24 April 1976, p. 1.

29 This is what Shevarnadze calls ‘the exchange of cadres which fosters ideas of internationalism’ (see article quoted in n. 1).

30 This is contested by Soviet sociologists on the basis of local research. See Bruk, S. I., Guboglo, M. N., ‘Faktory rasprostraneniya dvuyazychiya u narodov SSSR’, Sovetskaya Etnografiya, No. 5, 1975, p. 20.Google Scholar

31 Op. cit., p. 45.

32 Ibid., p. 46.

33 On this problem, see my book, L’Empire éclaté, Flamrnarion, Paris, forthcoming.

34 The 1970 census gives precise indications on this progress, especially for the period 1901–1970; See Itogi Vsesoyuznoy perepisi naseleniya 1970 goda, Moscow, 1972, Vol. III, Uroven’ obrazovaniya naseleniya SSSR, 576 pages.

35 Konstitutsiya soyaza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik, Article 30. For the relations between nationalities within and without the USSR, see ‘O proekte osnovnogo zakona SSSR’, Pravovedeniye, No. 4, July‐August 1977, p. 12.

36 Resolution of the CPSU for the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution. See also Lepeshkin, A. I., ‘Sovetskiy federalizm v periode razvitogo sotsializma’ in Sovetskoye gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 8, 1978, pp. 3–12.Google Scholar

37 See on this point Brezhnev’s, L. I. speech introducing the constitution, Kommunist, No. 15, 10 1977, p. 10.Google Scholar